


Shatter the Mirror

by YoureMyGirlBlue



Series: Beast [3]
Category: Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Alternate Universe, Complicated Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Rape/Non-con Elements, Roleplay, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:41:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoureMyGirlBlue/pseuds/YoureMyGirlBlue
Summary: Oneshots inspired by roleplays me and the awesome DarkXenoHunter have done. It doesn’t take place in my main Beast Wars universe and some of these will be mature so you’ve been warned. This is mostly for the two of us but you can read at your own risk.
Relationships: Human/Human, Human/Maximal, Human/Predacon
Series: Beast [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183358
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Shatter the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkXenoHunter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=DarkXenoHunter).



> **Happy birthday DarkXenoHunter! I tried to write Ryan as in character as I could and make it sweet but the idea kinda got away from me. I hope you like it anyway.**

Erin yawned as she headed back to her room. Rattrap had taken over monitor duty and she was looking forward to a good few hours of sleep. As she turned to go down her hall she stopped when she heard a squeak. “Hi Mr. Squeakers,” she greeted as the rat stopped right in front of her and looked up. It wasn’t unusual for him to explore the base at night. “What’s up boy?” He made various noises and bobbed up and down. That caught her attention as she leaned down to better talk to him. “What’s wrong?” Seeing he’d gotten her attention he moved to the edge of the hallway and looked back at her. His head making a ‘follow me’ gesture. She did so with no hesitation.

He led her into the neighboring hall and stopped in front of Ryan’s door. The rat lightly put a paw on it before looking back up at her. She got the message. “Thanks boy,” she kneeled down to lightly pat him on the head. “I’ll take it from here.” He almost seemed to nod in understanding before turning and heading off back to another hall.

She lightly knocked on the door. Erin waited a few more moments before trying again. “Ryan?” This time she heard a slight noise. Moments later the door opened. Ryan stood there and she could understand why the rat had brought her. His hair was messier than usual and his clothes rumpled with sleep. Or lack of it. If the dark circles under his eyes and exhausted posture were any indication.

“Erin?” his voice broke for a moment before it took on it’s normal tone. “What… What’s up?” His eyes suddenly shot open and frantically darted around. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she assured him. “I just wanted to see if everything’s alright.” She’d been curious as to why he hadn’t come to sleep with her or Dinobot in either of their rooms. But they’d wanted to give him some space and privacy if he’d needed it. Now the answer was obvious. “Is your scar bothering you?” He didn’t react so she kept on. “The nightmares again?” This time there was a small flinch. Most wouldn’t have caught it but she knew him too well.

“You’d better get some sleep,” he attempted to deflect. “Monitor duty can wipe you out.”

“Ryan,” she held his gaze. “Can I come in?”

For a moment neither moved. Then he let out a deep sigh. Both knew she wouldn’t let this go and clearly he was too tired to argue. So he stepped aside and let her in. His items were strewn around the room and all of his blankets were in a heap on the bed. She went and sat down on the end of it as he closed the door and then leaned against it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having them again?” It wasn’t that he had to tell her exactly. He could’ve told any of the Maximals. They would’ve kept their mouths shut and helped him.

“It’s nothing. Besides, I thought they’d go away in a day or two.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Clearly they didn’t. And they must be pretty bad if you didn’t want to sleep with Dinobot or me.” She let out her own sigh trying to keep her own hurt and frustration out of this. Those feelings wouldn’t help either of them at the moment. Instead she patted the spot next to her for him to sit down. She noted how he swayed ever so slightly as he walked over and joined her.

“I didn’t want to bother you guys with this. It’s not your problem.”

“If it affects you then it affects us. We’re a team Ryan.” She understood his trust issues but still. After all they’d been through he still didn’t want to open up to them? “If I was in your place would you want me to keep this to myself?”

“No,” he immediately answered. She took his hand in hers.

“You don’t have to talk about them if you don’t want to. But I think it might help to discuss them a little.” She knew the vaguest of details from the few she had seen. Mostly they involved the Preds. The spider in particular. Erin and the others didn’t know the full extent of what had happened when Tarantulas had kidnapped him but she could guess from her own experiences that none of it had been pleasant. Ryan still went out of his way to teach Tarantulas a lesson every time they encountered him.

“How about I tell you one of mine first?” He seemed surprised as he looked down at her. “Yeah. I don’t get them as often as I did or as bad as when they first started but I still get them. My worst one… Is the one where the Preds win. It never starts the same but it always ends with me being the last Maximal standing. The others all fell, including you, and I’m left facing off against all the Predacons. Megatron gloats like you’d imagine he would and instead of killing me he decides me living would be the worst form of punishment. In the dream he’s not wrong. I watch everyone being reduced to scrape metal and you? You’re left to the elements.”

“That’s...”

“Sometimes it ends there. A few really bad times it kept going. I won’t go into all the details of what the Preds do because it’s never really the same and honestly I’m so in shock from earlier in the dream what they get up to doesn’t bother me too much. Except occasionally I’m not the last Maximal standing. It’s either you or Rattrap or Dinobot or one of the others they kept alive as well. And I have to watch what happens to each one of you.” She took a moment and squeezed his hand as she noted the horrified look on his face. “Thankfully I don’t have that dream much anymore. And when I do all I have to do is wake up and see you or Dinobot, or both of you, to kick my brain out of it. Like I’m a kid and you’re my nightlights guarding me from the dark.” For a second she leaned into his side and enjoyed the warmth there.

“Before that I was like you. I tried to ignore them and pass them off as just bad dreams. Until they all ended up asking me what was wrong. So I broke down and told them. They didn’t judge me and most agreed they had similar nightmares. We talked them over and oddly enough it helped. To air our darker thoughts out there. It was like we robbed them of the power they had over us.” She used her free hand to move some of his hair out of his face. “I’m not saying it’ll help you entirely. You’re probably still gonna have nightmares and they’ll be terrible. But you can’t go on like this Ryan.” She kept on before he could come up with an excuse. “We both know if the Preds attacked right now you’d be in no condition to fight them.”

“You didn’t sign up for this,” he finally spoke. “Hell, I didn’t even know you had nightmares and now you’re more concerned over mine?” He laughed but it was hollow sound. “Goes to show how shit I am. I can’t keep my baggage together for a couple of nights and here you are left to pick up the pieces.”

“Dinobot has nightmares too,” she saw he wasn’t fully grasping it. “You saw a lesser one once.”

“Yeah,” he seemed to think back. The raptor had snarled in his sleep so much it had woken him up. Erin had motioned for him to lay still as she slowly and softly repeated the raptor’s name and moved to nuzzle him. Minutes later Dinobot had stirred and gone as stiff as a board before finally returning the attention. They’d both warned him to try something similar if it ever occurred with just him and the ex-Pred.

“He’s gotten better about it but when I first started sleeping with him he almost attacked me a couple of times.”

“He what?!”

“Don’t worry nothing happened beyond him scaring me. It just takes his processor time to catch up to the fact the person in bed with him is a friend not a foe. Pred programming.”

“How did you put up with that?”

“I didn’t ‘put up’ with anything. We adapted to the situation. It’s what you do when you care about someone. You figure out how to help each other.” She ran a hand through her hair. “He’s gotten more relaxed as a result.”

“You… Really think the same thing could work for me?” He couldn’t picture aggressive cuddling doing anything for the memories rattling around in his head.

“I don’t know. Could it really be worse?” His posture straightened up for a moment before slumping down. Almost like he was defeated.

She was a little surprised when he leaned against her. Erin shifted back in the bed so she could sit against the pile of blankets with him resting on top of her. She ran her fingers through his hair and lightly across the injury on his back to comfort him. They didn’t speak for so long she was actually starting to drift off when he spoke.

“They’re mostly about Tarantulas,” he began. She remained quiet but kept her hands moving to let him know she was listening. “I don’t think I can tell you everything about when I was with him. But he… It was so weird. In the beginning he was just an asshole you know? Playing sick games with me like I was some sort of lab rat.” He was talking so quickly the words spilled over each other. Like if he didn’t keep going they wouldn’t come out. So he didn’t stop. “I could almost get it. He’s the scientific one and he doesn’t give a shit about any of us. Just that we’re the only humans he’s ever seen. It didn’t make anything he did better but I could get an idea why he was doing it.” His hug on her tightened but she let him keep on talking.

“I don’t really remember when or why but something changed. One day things just… I don’t have any words for it. The tests still happened but he got even more twisted about them. Like he would tell me if I cooperated with him on one experiment he wouldn’t do any more that day. Or he’d give me some sort of reward like food I liked. The really bad part was I was so tired and hurt so much I… Went along with whatever he wanted. I just wanted it to end.” He gasped like he was in pain and in return she hugged him back.

“Then he stopped the tests. He’d ask me questions but he didn’t physically do anything to me. Well, maybe shocked me a few times after I smarted off but not even as badly as he’d done before or as much.” She could feel him shaking.

“Ryan...”

“He was playing mind games. He had to be! I didn’t want to fall for them. It got a little easier when I wasn’t hurting anymore and all my physical needs were fine. I couldn’t get what his angle was. Then he...” Erin knew better than to say anything as he broke down. The next day she would tell Dinobot. Not everything he’d said to her. That would be kept in strict confidence. But she’d give him a look and just say the spider’s name. That would be all he’d need to know. Tarantulas would be lucky if he even made it to the CR baths. Between the two of them they might manage to kill him. Though part of her knew even if they snuffed the spider it wouldn’t take away Ryan’s memories.

“It’s alright,” she assured him as his grip turned painful. “I swear to you that spider will never have you again.” She’d die before that happened.

“But what if he gets you?” came the tired question when Ryan finally regained himself.

“He won’t.”

“What if he...”

“Sh,” she told him placing a kiss on the top of his head. “He won’t. Dinobot won’t let that happen. Rattrap won’t let that happen. Cheetor won’t let that happen. None of the others will let that happen.”

“It happened once. It could happen again.”

“Because this time we’re ready for him. He won’t catch us off guard.” She forced him to look up at her. “You’re ours Ryan. Just as we’re yours. He won’t dare try it again. I promise you that.” The expression she held must’ve assured him because his eyes threatened to close as he rest back on her chest.

“I’m so tired...”

“Go ahead and sleep handsome,” she told him. “No more for tonight.”

“Stay?”

“Of course.” Erin shifted a little more to make them a bit more comfortable. A couple minutes later his breathing evened out and she knew he was asleep. If he had a nightmare she’d be there to wake him up. She could sleep tomorrow. Tired or not she’d stand guard all night.


End file.
